Two of six zones not functioning

I moved into a rental house and when the inspection guy came around it appeared the sprinklers were working fine. However, sometime later, I started to rake an area which wasn't doing so well and found two sprinkler heads which were irrigation sprinklers and i found a third sprinkler head which was the 3 ft tall garden sprinklers. I have a rain bird esp-tm controller, and I an the manual and those three sprinklers did not work while the other sprinklers did. I pulled the cover off and found four zones wired and two wire loose. All other wires were accounted for so it wasn't like they were being used for something as the sprinklers were functioning. Zones five and six had no wires attached to them so I attached the two wires to zones 5 and 6 but to no avail. What is the issue I'm having?

Did you turn on valves 5 and 6 manually to see what they do? By opening the bleeder screw or turning the solenoid counter clockwise? Some valves have a little lever on the back below the solenoid. A picture would help. Go to www.timypic.com, upload your pic there then cut n paste the "forum" code to your post.

Maybe the flow controls are turned all the way off.

Maybe the valves are broken and can't come on.

Are the wires color coded? Like a green and yellow wire for 5 and 6? Are they the same at the controller?

So the two valves both have a common wire and a colored wire?

Turn them on manually first at the valves and see what happens. Maybe unscrew that sprinkler off of the tall riser to make it easier to see if water comes out.